Chapter 147

Sloane

I woke up in his bed.

I knew where I was before I opened my eyes. I knew it by the smell. Woodsmoke and leather, worked so deep into the pillow and the blankets that I was breathing it in with every breath, and under it, faint, the cold clean smell of the mountain. For a moment I lay very still with my face in his pillow and didn’t think about anything at all.

Then I opened my eyes.

Light. That was the first thing. Bright white light, coming in through the small window at the end of the room and lying in a long square across the floor. Not storm light. Sun on snow. The kind of light that makes you squint.

The storm was over.

I lay and listened. No wind. No screaming in the pines. Only a long, deep, ringing quiet, and somewhere outside, very faint, the scrape of a shovel.

I sat up slowly.

Everything hurt. Not badly. Everywhere. My hands were stiff, and the skin across my knuckles was cracked and raw from the cold, and my f